All posts tagged: nose expert

There’s No Third Rail Like the Middle East

There’s No Third Rail Like the Middle East

Published by skeptic

How should citizens outside the region handle their differences of opinion? Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Michael Nigro / Getty; Ronen Tivony / NurPhoto / Getty November 3, 2023, 3:55 PM ET Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here. Question of the Week People all over the world are divided about the best way forward in the Middle East. As conflict devastates that region, how should citizens outside the Middle East handle their differences of opinion about the best way forward without tearing their societies apart? Send your responses to [email protected] or simply reply to this email. Conversations of Note In Spiegel International, under the headline “Middle East Conflict Tests the Postwar World Order,” a piece with six bylines advances a theory of geopolitics and poses a series of questions: In Germany, which bears “historic responsibility for the worst imaginable crime,” as Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in her …

Humans Have Two Noses. Really.

Humans Have Two Noses. Really.

Published by skeptic

Having caught a cold every month since my kid started day care, I’ve devoted a lot of time recently to the indignity of unclogging my nose. I’m blowing, always. I have also struck up an intimate acquaintance with neti pots and a great variety of decongestants. (Ask for the stuff that actually works, squirreled away behind the counter.) And on sleepless nights, I’ve spent hours turning side to side, trying to clear one nostril and then the other. Nasal congestion, I’ve learned in all this, is far weirder than I ever thought. For starters, the nose is actually two noses, which work in an alternating cycle that is somehow connected to our armpits. The argument that humans have two noses was first put to me by Ronald Eccles, a nose expert who ran the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University, in Wales, until his retirement a few years ago. This sounds absurd, I know, but consider what your nose—or noses—looks like on the inside: Each nostril opens into its own nasal cavity, which does not …